we don't know what we should have said; but we had grown familiar by this time with his way, and only said, very gravely: It was fortunate, too, that you put them into their right places, Jack, or you might have contracted a squint! But, captain, how did you see to pick them up?' 'Oh! groped, sir, groped!' returned he coolly.

The captain adopted the ingenious but now hackneyed mode of bringing in his customary stories, when nobody was thinking of them, as-" Hark! did you hear a gun? Talking of guns, I am put in remembrance of a story which will make you laugh'—and so on he went. By an expedient of this nature, he one day introduced a most extraordinary instance of the repulsive power of caloric. You talk of nature,' said he; 'nobody knows what wonderful powers there are in nature but those who have travelled in distant countries. You must know,' he continued, 'when I was in India, I went upon an expedition up the country, travelling on the back of an elephant, with many others in company. One of the finest sights I saw on the journey was a burning mountain, a regular volcano, in complete action-torrents of burning lava pouring down its sides like a flaming river. We thought we had been safe from the fire, but all at once the lava made a rush towards us. Το flee was impossible the elephants took to flight, and rushed into the midst of the burning torrent. We thought we should have been all consumed in an instant; but, wonderful to tell, such was the intensity of the heat, or, to speak scientifically, such the repulsive energy of the caloric, that it absolutely bore up the whole squad of elephants-away they went roaring across the red-hot lava, borne up about a foot above its surface by a pure atmosphere of heat! The thing was perfectly surprising. The doctor belonging to the company was so much struck with it, as a curious scientific fact, that, on returning to Calcutta, he wrote an account of it to the Philosophical Society. You may see it in the fourteenth volume of their Transactions.

This imaginative drollery of Smithers is matched in

inventiveness by certain stories told by a character who figures in a modern novel called the Naval Officer, and who also is entitled the captain :- Talking of broiling steaks,' so goes the quotation, when I was in Egypt, we used to broil our beef-steaks on the rocks-no occasion for fire-thermometer at 200 degrees-hot as a furnace! I have seen four thousand men at a time cooking for the whole army as much as twenty or thirty thousand pounds of steaks, all hissing and frying at a time—just about noon of course, you know-not a spark of fire! Some of the soldiers who were brought up as glassblowers at Leith, declared they never saw such heat. I used to go to leeward of them for a whiff, and think of Old England. Ay! that's the country after all, where a man may think and say what he pleases. But that sort of work did not last long, as you may suppose; their eyes were all fried out in three or four weeks! I had been ill in my bed, for I was attached to the 72d Regiment, seventeen hundred strong. I had a party of seamen with me; but the ophthalmia made such ravages, that the whole regiment, colonel and all, went stone-blindall except one corporal. You may stare, gentlemen, but it's very true. Well, this corporal had a precious time of it; he was obliged to lead out the whole regiment to water; he led the way, and two or three took hold of the skirts of his jacket on each side; the skirts of these were seized again by as many more; and double the number to the last, and so all held on by one another, till they all had a drink at the well; and, most unfortunately, there was but one well among us all-so this corporal used to water the regiment just as a groom waters his horses; and all spreading out, you know, just like the tail of a peacock.'-' Of which the corporal was the rump!' interrupted the doctor. The captain looked grave. You found it warm in that country?' 'Warm!' exclaimed the captain; what do you think of nineteen of my men being killed by the concentrated rays of light falling on the sentinels' bright muskets, and setting fire to the powder! I commanded a mortar

battery at Acre, and I did the French desperate mischief with the shells. I used to pitch in among them when they had sat down to dinner. But how do you think the scoundrels weathered me at last? They trained a parcel of poodle-dogs to watch the shells when they fell, and then to run and pull the fusees out with their teeth! Did you ever hear of such villains? By this means they saved hundreds of men, and only lost half a dozen of dogs.' 6 Capital salmon this,' said the captain; where does the billet get it from? By the by, talking of that, did you ever hear of the pickled salmon in Scotland?' We all replied in the affirmative. 'Oh, you don't take it. Hang it, I don't mean dead pickled salmon; I mean live pickled salmon, swimming about in tanks, as merry as grigs, and as hungry as rats.' We all expressed our astonishment at this, and declared we never heard of it before. 'I thought not, said he, 'for it's only lately they have been introduced in this country by a particular friend of mine. Dr MacI cannot now remember his horrid jaw-breaking Scotch name; he was a great chemist and geologist, and all that sort of thing-a clever fellow, I can tell you, though you may laugh. Well, this fellow, sir, took nature by the heels, and capsized her, as we say. What does he do, but he catches salmon, and puts them into tanks, and every day added more and more salt, till the water was as thick as gruel, and the fish could hardly wag their tails in it. Then he threw in whole peppercorns, half-a-dozen pounds at a time, till there was enough. Then he began to dilute with vinegar until his pickle was complete. The fish did not half like it at first, but habit is everything; and when he shewed me his tank, they were swimming about as merry as a shoal of dace; he fed them with fennel, chopped small, and black peppercorns. 66 Come, doctor," says I, "I trust no man upon tick; if I don't taste, I wont believe my own eyes, though I can believe my tongue." (We looked at each other.) "That you shall do in a minute," says he ; so he whipped one of them out with a landing-net, and

when I stuck my knife into him, the pickle ran out of his body like wine out of a claret bottle, and I ate at least two pounds of the rascal while he flapped his tail in my face! I never tasted such salmon as that. Worth your while to go to Scotland, if it's only for the sake of eating live pickled salmon. I'll give you a letter, any of you, to my friend. He'll be glad to see you; and then you may convince yourselves. Take my word for it, if once you eat salmon that way, you will never eat it any other.'

The

We have left ourselves little space for any serious remarks on the subject of fibbing, but we believe that scarcely any grave reflections will be necessary. utterly contemptible nature of the practice is too apparent to require any exposition, and we hope that the seemingly light manner in which we have talked of it will not make our true purpose or sentiments be mistaken. If there be any one unfortunate enough to have begun the practice of exaggeration, let him think of Jack Smithers, and stop in time; let him think of an amiable, generous man, for such the captain really was, made the scorn and laughing-stock of all who knew him, by a habit begun in youth, and continued until it became the one ruling passion of his nature, and threw all his better qualities into the shade.

DISCHARGING OF A SWISS LAKE.

IN the Swiss canton of Unterwalden, lies a lake called the Lungern-see, about three miles long and a quarter broad, girt on all sides but one by steep and lofty mountains, which seem to ascend in most places from the water's edge. At the end not bounded by mountains, the lake is hemmed in by a ridge of land of considerable thickness, called the Kaiserstuhl, over which the superfluous waters flow precipitously, with a fall of more than 700 feet, to

the plain of Gieswyl, and there form the river Aa. When, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the village population began to outgrow its means of support, the elders turned their eyes to the space engrossed by the lake, and, remembering how their neighbours of Gieswyl had, in times past, obtained a large extent of land from the waters that covered it, bethought them how much might be added to their little territory, if the bed of the lake could be reduced to a smaller compass, by piercing the barrier at its northern end. On the 16th of November 1788, the subject was discussed in a meeting of the community. They calculated that, since the greater part of the lake was not more than 100 feet in depth, a conduit opened at a point 120 feet below its surface-level, would reclaim above 500 acres of land. This would be a most valuable acquisition. The attempt was determined upon, although as yet no one knew in what manner it could be executed; and one and all, after the old Swiss fashion, bound themselves to its accomplishment.

Their next step was to seek the advice of some one versed in mining operations. At that time, lead-mines were at work in the Valley of Lauterbrunn; and the director of these, Herr Degeler, was brought over to survey and measure the site, and fix the plan of their undertaking. On examination of the ground, he recommended that a shaft should be driven from a point near the bed of the Aa, through the steepest face of the Kaiserstuhl, slightly inclining upwards, until it reached the waters of the lake. He was questioned as to the details and practicability of the event, with a minuteness and forethought remarkable in simple herdsmen ; especially respecting the damage which any sudden outlet of the waters might cause to the plain below. He reported favourably of the scheme, the cost of which he estimated at a sum much less than the value of the land to be reclaimed, and strongly advised the villagers to attempt the work. Thus encouraged, they proceeded to settle the contribution, in money or labour, to be rendered by each inhabitant. Four miners from Lauter